Reviews by bob

The Good: any song that starts off by stating Who-ho!
The Bad: being lazy and naming a song “song 2”…
The Ugly: trying to understand if the album title is a reference to the band’s name, or bad eye sight, or just unfiltered beer?

Yeah… so… Blur… not my cup of tea.
2 serious hits on the album, they are appreciated, and I was actually enjoying my second spin of the album, digitally speaking, until I got to the song Chinese Bomb and started thinking “what the fuck am I listening to?”

Thankfully I spent the biggest part of the ‘90s not worrying about which Brit Pop band was bigger; Blur or Oasis, or any of the other wankers that were out there at the time, as I was gratefully enjoying the whole Grunge scene instead.

Anyways, we are here to talk about this album, and I think I say enough with the following “it’s not bad, but isn’t great either, and in your heart you kinda know that, alothough it sounds alright, it’s actually just shite”

Who-ho 3* downgraded to 2*

The Good: First Tom Waits album on the list
The Bad: The smirky giggle he does ones too often
The Ugly: That the album is classified as Folk and Singer Songwriter

Consider me a Tom Waits fanboy, which means I’d love to have a talk with all the people who give this album a 1* star, and complain about his voice… it is all an act, one large monologue almost, while playing the piano, and improvising… Pure poetry.

Having said all that… not my favorite Tom Waits album. This is one where you really need to sit down, in an environment that oozes disconnect, with an ample supply of your favorite spirits…

As a fanboy, I should give 5*… right?
After all, there’s a blur drizzle down the plateglass, as a neon swizzle stick is stirring up the sultry night air...

The Good: this is the 4th U2 album to appear on the list, which should mean the last!
The Bad: That there have been 4 U2 albums on the list, and oh so many other bands not even mentioned…
The Ugly: THOSE FUCKING SUNGLASSES BONO STARTED WEARING!!!

While listening to the album, my wife kept commenting that it all sounds the same… not the album, just U2 in general. Which begs the question why this is the 4th album on the list?

I’ve mentioned it before, so I won’t say again that I am not a U2 fan… having not said that, and, believe it or not, never having listened to the album, it is amazing that I am familiar with more than 50% of the tunes on the album.
Something that is impressive all on its own.

Yet, if anything, what this album did for U2 was polarize the public where, up to The Joshua Tree, there were massive fanboys and the general public just appreciated the band, while a small group disliked them. When Bono put on the fly-eye glasses, the fanboys became accolades, and the rest of us just started really disliking anything U2, and that is shown by the comments on this album.

However, we should be rating the albums for what they are, and if we enjoy listening to them… so, painfully, here’s 4* for a band I love to hate.

The Good: Machine Head is an awesome song by Busch!
The Bad: This isn’t a Bush album…
The Ugly: Realizing that Deep Purple, DP, is NOT a reference to a sexual act…

What a treat this album has turned out to be… and to think that this is the second DP album that I’ve been presented on this here voyage.
The musicianship on the album is excellent, the songs are great, the solos are delightful…

and yet, no 5* because I need to be a little more critical… and I wish that the rating would be between zero and 10 stars… then this album would get a solid 7*

For now, here is the undeserved 3* because it should be 4*, but that is what I gave Ray Charles’s album yesterday, and that wouldn’t be fair...

The Good: An album title that tells it like it is!
The Bad: that the modern sound is dated…
The Ugly: That we are talking about C&W… Yeehaw…

There isn’t much to say about an album for which much has been said already, except that I agree.
The album is awesome.
Ray Charles is the GOAT.
The background singers are dated.
It feels like you are listening to the soundtrack to a Disney movie.
etc…

Today was my maiden voyage listening to this album. I had seen the title here and there, but as I am not a C&W fan, and stupid, I never bothered to listen to it… and boy was I knocked on my socks.

This album is awesome, and Ray Charles is the GOAT, and the background singers are dated, and it does feel like I you are listening to the soundtrack of a Disney movie, and it all makes sense…

The only downside to this album is, you guessed it, a couple of songs too long…

Soooooooooooooo close to 5*

The Good: The American Dream!
The Bad: misreading the bands name and thinking that we will be trippin’ a little…
The Ugly: the fact that LCD is old tec by now…

When the album showed up my initial reaction was “I’ve already listened to this…” because i recalled the band’s name… I even had to go back and read my comments about the other album I listened to, to read that I had actually enjoyed the experience…

And I again enjoyed the experience, however, there are a couple of comments I’d like to make:
While the first time I was exposed to LCD Soundsystem I was pleasantly surprised, this time around I had a higher level of expectations, and though I found several of the tracks enjoyable, having to sit through 60+ minutes was a little taxing for me.
It also dawned on me why I did like LCD Soundsystem the first time I listened to them, and that’s because they are, to a certain extent, a modern version of the Talking Heads… but only to a certain extent.

Having said all this, I don’t understand why this band has 2 albums (I hope only 2) on the 1001 list…

3*

The Good: Turns out we are not hunting whales!
The Bad: We are not making wine out of grapes either…
The Ugly: The album cover…

So far, every time that I’ve been presented with a band I am not familiar with, at least the album art has proven to be something interesting to look at… not this time. Then you go and spend some time reading about the band, and find out that the album photograph was taken by renowned photographer Jim Marshall, and that the little “flip the bird” on the washboard had to be airbrushed out… Though this is nice trivia knowledge, I still don’t like the photo.

So what about the music? Nothing wrong with it, just too much here, and then, too much there… You can hear these cats are true musicians, but you get the feeling they are trying too hard.
Then you read all the trials and tribulations this band went through, and you start understanding that, sometimes, life is just a bastard.

For some reason, several songs on the album were greyed out.. guess there still are disputes about the song rights… even half a century later.

3*, and I am giving those out of sympathy, because the album is closer to 2 1/2*

The Good: We finally understand where Kramer got his name from…
The Bad: Finding out that the CCR drummer shared the nickname with Kramer…
The Ugly: Dumb, Dumber, Drummer… what?

Going to keep this one short.
The album contains one too many hits not to warrant 5*
But then you get to the 11 minute version of “I heard it through the grapevine”… and take into consideration the 7+ minute intro song…

Great album though!

The Good: U2
The Bad: U2
The Ugly: U2

Is that me cheating above? Should I be more creative? Maybe. However, I’ve never been a U2 fan, even if I really like a lot of their music… I just find that Bono has re-invented the term Ego

However, holy crap, what an album!
Many of my friends in high school and college had this album, yet I never bothered listening to it, the album that is. Because, unless one was living under a rock, there was no escaping several of the massive hits that are included on this album.

A great listen. An album to played with frequency, and thus, sadly for me, a 5*

The Good: JMJ!
The Bad: Only old farts like me know who JMJ is…
The Ugly: The younger folk will think JMJ stands for Jimmy Jam… or maybe only the old farts like me know know that one too…

I had a slight grin on my face when this album presented itself this morning, as it reminded me of my first CD purchase.
Back in the mid ‘80s, when slowly but surely the Compact Disc was starting to enter the mainstream, I visited a record store with a friend of mine. Though my intention was to purchase a record (vinyl), he pointed out to me that digital was were it was at…

I forget which record I was going to buy, but I recall finding it in the CD section and proudly carrying it towards the counter so that I could spend some of my hard saved currency, and that was when my friend stopped me and asked to see the case.
Turns out that not all CD’s are the same, and that there was this secret code on the back of the CD which would let you know how digital—read: special—the damn thing would be.
You see, on one of the bottom corners, on the back of the CD case, you could find a sequence of three letters which was build-up by either D or A, my carefully selected CD was showing AAD, and that, for you who are still reading this, meant that my CD might as well have been a cassette tape as the first A told us the recording was Analog, the second A told us the mixing was Analog, and the last D meant that the mastering was done Digitally. I believe this was called the SPARS code, you can search it online.

So what does this have to do with the album we are reviewing today?
Well, while I went back to search for a better CD, and ended up purchasing Ship of Fools by Erasure, my friend was proudly holding up his copy of Oxygene by JMJ with the perfect classification of DDD!
It wasn’t till the mid ‘90s that I started listening to Oxygene (part 4 mainly, sorry) and was able to appreciate the sonic experience that JMJ.

JMJ was the artist who introduced me to ambient music, who made me appreciate works from people like Philip Glass, Enigma, St. Germain, and anything digital really.
With time, one can easily accept the fact that this album does not age well, in the sense that you’d need to have an understanding of early electronic music, to appreciate what you are listening to.

However, would I rate this album high?
I am going to be straight down the middle on this one and stick to the 3*

The Good: Prince!!!
The Bad: double album…
The Ugly: failure in predicting the future…

If I am correct, there are 3 Prince albums on the 1001 list, and this is the first one I get to listen to.
If I am also correct, the “professionals” who have created this 1001 list are a bunch of ignorant bastards, as there are, at minimum, 3 Prince albums which should have been included additionally (Dirty Mindy/Controversy as this is the OG Prince, Around the World In a Day as this heralded his release from the mayor labels, and Parade which is the soundtrack to his second movie “Under the Cherry Moon”, probably my favorite bad movie ever!

But I digress, as we are not here to bitch about the list, but we are here to talk about this album….

I heard the song 1999 when it came out, but I did not buy the album till I became enthralled with Prince due to Purple Rain.
Consider me a fanboy!
The album which I purchased was the single vinyl version, which even had a press error as on side 2 the label had been double printed—and I speak in past-tense as, unfortunately for me, my entire record collection was sold by my mother at some point in the ‘90s as she needed to create space… but let’s not go there…

1999, Little Red Corvette, Delirious and Free, that was side 1… as close to perfection as one can get. Side 2, well, not bad, but it didn’t get the playtime as side 1 did.

Originally I was going to give this album 4*, as this is one of my least favorite Prince albums from his pre NPG oeuvre, however, by the third listen, I was all smiles!!!

5*

The Good: a live album recorded in Budokan!
The Bad: a band which calls themselves cheap anything
The Ugly: realizing that we’ve been tricked… cheaply…

One should wonder if any recording made at the Budokan will instantly be special… because one too many bands has believed this to be the case, and has failed miserably.

So is this album like that? A failure, which happened to be taped at the Budokan?
Well, not really. Because, though I am no big fan of cheap trick, one thing that is undeniable about this album is the simple fact that you have a some musicians, on stage, in front of an appreciative audience, having fun! You can hear them having fun, you can feel them having fun.

Not the greatest live album ever, but that’s obvious as they are not the greatest band ever. However, this album contains one of the greatest songs all people recognize without them knowing who the band is, or where it was taped, and nobody could really give a rat’s ass…

So here’s to Cheap Trick @ Budokan, wanting us to want them!

3*

The Good: 90’s alternative music!
The Bad: not understanding what crooked rain actually is
The Ugly: the band finding crooked rain important enough to repeat it in the title…

What in the actual fuck? I am seriously starting to doubt my taste in music, or, trying to understand the rationality being applied when “those in the know” create a Top x album list and add mundane stuff like this to it.

Don’t get me wrong, the album is palatable for sure, however, I checked out of curiosity if Kerosene Hat by the band Cracker is included in the list, which it isn’t, and that is just stupid as it was key in mainstreaming the indie/alt rock wave of the ‘90s
I can remember people on campus walking around with Pavement T-shirts, yet I couldn’t recall if I had listened to their music at the time, so I was excited to give this album a spin… call me disappointed as I am starting to really dislike anything “lo-fi”, or where the singer of a band feels it is important to do their best to emulate a period of their life when their voice was shifting from child to man…

2* for not hating this album… however, if I would have to listen to the nasally whining lyrics again, I might just drop the rating down to 1*

The Good: one of my favorite cartoons from the Mad Magazine era.
The Bad: no madcap spy stuff...
The Ugly: ...

No clue who John Zorn is.
No clue how I'm supposed to enjoy the music... though I tried, and will try again.

From reading other commentary it seems this music needs additional listening, or maybe one of the million other albums which he's published

The Good: Dorothy has managed to leave Oz!
The Bad: Finding out that Dorothy isn’t who we believe her to be…
The Ugly: Trying to figure out exactly what the wizard has done to her….

Undeniably a stellar album showcasing the importance of great songwriting and musicianship.
Though for me this is not Elton’s best album, it sure is a great listen!

However, for me, the experience of listening to this album starts off too damn strong, which means it tapers off towards the end. I would have ended with the opening song, but that’s just me.

Having said all that, any artist would love to have something like this in their repertoire, and be willing to travel to Oz to talk to a wizard to see if they too can have such success…

4* as there are a couple of songs that are skip-able...

The Good: The album cover. Great color, great lines…
The Bad: There isn’t much color or lines in the album.
The Ugly: Totally removing any fondness I might have had for Syd B

Is the only reason that Syd is on this list due to him being the co-founder of one of the greatest bands ever? Then again, IMHO, Pink Floyd really became great when Syd had already been replaced.

So we have some psychedelic music, some incoherent singing, and a lot of acoustic strumming. Kudo’s to those who can find joy in this album!

I won’t be able to listen to this album again… 1*

The Good: Being there is always a good thing!
The Bad: It seems that Wilco is there too…
The Ugly: That Wilco isn’t 1 person, but an entire band… too crowded there…

This is the second Wilco album that I’ve had the displeasure of having to listen to, and I should maybe alter the word displeasure, as it wasn’t unpleasant, more just bland…
The other album received the main commentary that “it was 40 minutes too long…”, I guess that is really what Wilco is after: creating albums which their fans can enjoy for lengthy periods, while those who aren’t impressed can’t wish to be over and done with.

I do have to say that this album, in comparison with Yankee Foxtrot Whisky something, was more palpable. As pure background music while you are focused on anything but the album, it performed stellar!

3* for it’s ability of just disappearing into the background…

Hello, this is me after listening to the album a second time… fucking Wilco, starts growing on you with that laid-back fusion of this, that and the other thing. I am starting to understand how certain people compare this to Exile On Main Street. Bumping the album up to 4* as it starts to grow on you...

The Good: An album by Elvis!
The Bad: Wait… it’s not by Elvis…
The Ugly: Then why call it Graceland?

Ahhhh, the comments I am reading about cultural appropriation… People should get a fucking life and appreciating all that has been “stolen” over the ages to get us where we are today.

When this album came out you had the musical community trying to help out others; Feed The World, I Won’t Play Sun City et al
Artist were voicing opinions and trying to create awareness.

Little Paul was in a creative rut, heard something that inspired him to create new music, and boy what a record did he make. Would the record not have been conceived without him hearing mbaqanga? Maybe. Does it matter? No. I doubt that the South African artist he took on tour with him worried about global attention to their art, and more importantly, to their plight for freedom.

Going to dish out 4*

The Good: An album about being honest!
The Bad: Finding out that it’s not about being honest…
The Ugly: Trying to figure out what Frank would’ve thought about this…

Yes, Amy was a whirlwind in, what was regretfully, a stale period in music when nothing “special” was being produced.
And if we go judging by the amount of Amy clones whom popped up left and right, there was money to be made singing like a lounge singer…

I had never listened to this album, so maiden voyage… and I did not particularly care for it. Amy’s voice, though nice, is not my cup of tea, and quickly one start to find it annoying. The “hip-hop” feel that this album also has with the scratching and beats makes me want to hit the skip button…

So, glad that there are plenty of people who view(ed) Amy as one of the greatest… I am not one of them.
2* as it wasn’t something to make me vomit...

The Good: A Christmas album that pops up on the 26th of December
The Bad: if it would not have been December
The Ugly: having to listen to a Christmas message from Phil Spector, knowing what we know now…

Yes, a great album of Christmas songs that can actually be played during a party, as most of them invite you to get up and shake your booty!

However, nobody will ever play a Christmas album in the middle of summer… so, just 3 stars…
Which doesn’t take away from the great artists featured on this album!… screw it, 4*